Cutter somewhat clumsy and low-tech. While decent, design and print software could be more modern and intuitive.

Bottom Line

The Dymo LabelWriter Wireless churns out labels in numerous shapes, colors, and sizes at a competitive per-label cost.

The newest Dymo desktop label printer, the Dymo LabelWriter Wireless ($149.99), is comparable in price and features to Brother's QL-810W, which itself is a step down from our Editors' Choice, the QL-820NWB. The LabelWriter Wireless is much like the Brother QL-810W in that they both have adept label design and print software for PCs and mobile devices, and you can connect to either via Wi-Fi or USB. However, the Brother model is somewhat slicker in a few key ways: It comes with an automatic cutter, as well as support for an optional battery that makes the printer functional where power is unavailable. Even so, the LabelWriter Wireless is a highly capable, networkable label design and print system, making it a decent alternative to the Brother QL-810W as a home-based or small office labeling solution.

Sleek and Simple

The LabelWriter Wireless is available in one of two colors: white or black. On both versions, the midriff (where the controls are located) is encircled with a classy silver (or dark-gray) decorative band. For what it is, the LabelWriter Wireless looks stylish. However, while taking it out of the box for my initial inspection, the first thing I noticed was that it feels hollow and, well, plastic-like.

Given that the LabelWriter Wireless measures 4.9 by 5 by 8 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.1 pounds; finding a place to put it shouldn't be difficult, but then again, that's the case with most desktop label printers. The Brother QL-810W, for instance, measures 5.7 by 5 by 9.2 inches and weighs only 2.4 pounds, as does its costlier sibling, the Brother QL-820NWB, making them both slightly smaller and lighter than the LabelWriter Wireless.

Both the Brother models come with an electronic cutter that you can set to cut automatically after each label or at the end of each print job. The LabelWriter Wireless's cutter, on the other hand, consists of a serrated blade that spans the width of the output slot, and you tear the labels off (either one label at a time as you print or at the end of a print job), manually, much like cutting a sheet of aluminum foil from the blade affixed to the box in which the foil is packaged. While this method—tearing the labels off their roll–may seem somewhat crude (especially if you're cutting one label at a time), from an efficiency standpoint, it works well enough; not once did I lose a label to a bad tear. That said, the Brother models' electronic cutter is much more productive and convenient.

Setup, Connectivity, Software, and Labels

As with most of its competitors, you design your labels for printing from PCs with the LabelWriter Wireless's bundled software (aptly dubbed Dymo Label Software), or from tablets and smartphones with the Dymo Connect Mobile App. Thus, the LabelWriter Wireless neither has (nor needs) much of a control panel; in this case, the controls consist of three buttons—power, Advance, and Back—and two status LEDs (power on and Wi-Fi). Advance and Back allow you to feed the label media back and forth in the output slot for alignment and cutting.

Setting up the LabelWriter Wireless to connect wirelessly is a snap, but during my testing I also set it up to use the included USB cable, which turned out to be somewhat of an ordeal. Let's look at using Wi-Fi, first, though, which consists of unboxing the unit, loading the included starter roll of blank labels, and installing the software on your PC. After you get the printer itself unboxed and plugged into a power source, the easiest way to connect it to your Wi-Fi network is with Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), where you connect the device in question to your wireless router with the touch of two buttons, one on the printer and one on the router itself.

Now that the printer is on your network, you download the appropriate drivers and software by navigating to the printer's URL (which is designated in the Getting Started material). This starts Dymo's Quick Setup Wizard, which in turn downloads the drivers and configures the connection. Next, you go to support.dymo.com to download and install Dymo Label Software, and now you're ready to design and print labels.

Configuring the drivers to use a USB connection isn't nearly as straightforward (nor is it laid out well in the bundled documentation). Getting it done required that I rely on Windows Plug 'n' Play's ability to identify the device, and then search the web, first, to find the appropriate drivers, and then again to download and install Dymo Label Software. This all worked as it should have, but if you're familiar with this manual process, it may not sound like much of a chore; my concern is that many of today's potential users are accustom to more automated installation procedures. I should also point out that, in addition to Wi-Fi and a direct connection via USB, the Brother QL-820NWB also supports Ethernet, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi Direct (for a routerless peer-to-peer network connection between the printer and mobile devices in close proximity), thereby providing a much wider range of connectivity options than the LabelWriter Wireless.

Dymo's label design software is a little rudimentary, compared with Brother's software. For one thing, I found that it often required several more steps to get the same results. For instance, neither the desktop software nor the mobile app can recognize which label type is loaded in the printer. The Brother software, on the other hand, recognized the blank label type and presented me with an appropriately formatted template to get me started. In addition, Brother's templates continuously reformatted themselves as I worked, whereas the Dymo templates did not. The bottom line in all this is that while I was able to design and print labels in Dymo's software well enough, I found Brother's programs (the PC software and the mobile app) easier to use.

As for blank label rolls, Dymo offers about 40 label sizes up to 25⁄16 inches wide, in both paper and plastic media types and several different colors, including clear. To load a role in your printer, you simply open the top of the machine, remove and adjust the paper roll spool to accommodate the size on hand, feed the end of the blank roll into the feed slot, and press the Advance button to feed the media through the printhead and out through the output slot. It's all quite quick and efficient. You're now ready to print labels.

Quick, Quality Prints

Dymo rates the LabelWriter Wireless at 71 labels per minute (lpm), which is the same rating as a few of its predecessors, including the Dymo LabelWriter Turbo 450 and the LabelWriter 4XL. Brother, on the other hand, rates its QL-810W and QL-820NWB at 110 one-color text labels (the Brother models can also print in red, or black and red). I tested the LabelWriter Wireless over USB from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional.

The LabelWriter Wireless printed three-line "standard address labels," at a rate of about 67.8lpm.That's less than 1lpm slower than the Dymo 450 Turbo and around 30lpm slower than Brother's QL-820NWB and QL-810W, as well as 25lpm slower than Brother's QL-800, a non-networkable version of the Brother QL-800-series discussed throughout. The Leitz Icon Smart Labeling System, another networkable desktop labeler in this class, printed similar standard address labels (though not as attractively) at 116lpm, outpacing the LabelWriter Wireless by about 50lpm. All that said, how fast the LabelWriter Wireless will print for you depends on several factors, including foremost on what you're printing.

As for print quality, when I printed standard address, file folder, and barcode labels, the LabelWriter Wireless's output looked fine. Unlike the Brother models discussed here, though, the Dymo machine didn't do as well with grayscales and tints. I also saw better kerning and other letter- and line-spacing from some of Dymo's 42 supported type styles over others, but overall, the LabelWriter Wireless's print quality is above acceptable for a label printer.

The Ongoing Cost of Staying Organized

Given the types, sizes, quantities, and several other factors, zeroing in on a cost per label (CPL) is perhaps even more of a moving target than is coming up with a general print speed. When I did the math (using Dymo's prices from its website) to figure out the per-label cost of printing a 11⁄8-by-31⁄2 white standard address label from a roll of 350 die-cut labels, it came to about 2.3 cents per label. That's not bad at all, considering that printing a similar label on any of the Brother printers discussed here will run you around 3.9 cents each.

You can get even lower running costs by purchasing your blank label rolls in quantities. Buying 80 of the aforementioned rolls will save you just over $2 per roll, which will drop the CPL by just over 25 percent—but that, of course, isn't limited to only Dymo label purchases. Other label printer makers offer quantity discounts, too.

Simple Often Works Best

Once you've taken the time to get the hang of Dymo's rustic little label design program and/or mobile app, creating labels and printing them out should be simple; although you do get somewhat better layout tools and, as a result, a little more attractive-looking labels, from Brother's software. While Brother's QL-series label makers may be slightly superior and a bit more polished in some ways, both systems get the job done quickly, and without a lot of fuss.

What I like most about the Dymo LabelWriter Wireless, though, is that the label print media—the blank tapes or label rolls—do, when you're selective about what you buy, get the job done for less money. If you're planning on printing hundreds, perhaps even thousands of labels ongoing and for a while, the Dymo LabelWriter Wireless label printer should save you some money on running costs, which seems like reason enough to consider it as a viable labeling system for your home-based or small office or workgroup.

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About the Author

William Harrel is a contributing editor focusing on printer and scanner technology and reviews. He has been writing about computer technology since well before the advent of the internet. He has authored or coauthored 20 books—including titles in the popular "Bible," "Secrets," and "For Dummies" series—on digital design and desktop publishing softw... See Full Bio

Dymo LabelWriter Wireless

Dymo LabelWriter Wireless

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